Pages

Queen Beryl

My earliest memory of Sailor Moon consisted of my cousin ordering his nanny to turn on the TV, which then showed a woman's fingernails growing longer. The woman was Queen Beryl, and it was love, mixed with horror, at first sight.

She is sorceress of the highest order, sovereign of the Negaverse. Her animosity toward the miniskirt-wearing protagonists can be explained in several ways, depending on the version you've watched.

In the anime, Beryl is an out-and-out megalomaniac who happens to fancy Prince Endymion and his reincarnation (Mamoru Chiba/Darien Shields).

Beryl as seen in the anime version

She has a more romantic bent in the manga. Here she is portrayed as an admirer of Endymion, ruler of Earth in an era so primordial that the Moon still qualifies as habitable. Endymion has feelings for one of the Moon denizens: their princess Serenity no less. Beryl is witch scorned, natch. It doesn't help that the sentient solar energy, Metalia, is training Beryl's inner green-eyed monster.

This is a tale as old as ancient Greece. Sailor Moon creator Naoko Takeuchi clearly co-opted the myth of the goddess Selene's nightly affair with the preposterously handsome shepherd Endymion. Any lovelorn shepherdess would surely empathize with Beryl.

Queen Beryl transitioned to live action with the help of actors Yuri Nishina, Akiko Miyazawa and Aya Sugimoto. No word yet on Lindsay Lohan's turn as Sailor Moon. But she did appear on Anger Management in April, looking like this: